How to Live With Intention

Only a surfer knows the feeling...but here are 10 other ways.

Last night I made a pact with myself. I wouldn’t look at my phone after 6pm. I’d shut it down in its dock and live in the moment. I had activities planned — a book I’m enjoying and a playoff basketball game to watch. I made the necessary adjustments to my phone signifying that I was “away.” Now, time to live in the moment!

After bath and bed time for my daughter which was extra enjoyable without a phone buzzing for my attention, I sat in a chair reading Annihilation by Michel Houellbecq before the game started. I kept the book near me for commercial breaks and halftime — scary times without a phone. Commercials during sports have become abhorrent. Arby’s: We have the Meats? Seriously?

I found myself sitting there, watching and reading during breaks and feeling rather twitchy for the majority of the 3-hour evening — probably akin to a smoker hate-chewing Nicorette gum. This is harder than I thought. It’s wild that I can't even watch a basketball game with intention. I am afraid.

I further validated to myself that the purest place one can be in these inundated times is in the ocean, preferably surfing. Can’t touch us! Regardless of anything you have going, once you paddle out, it’s you and the saltwater and the pelicans and the kelp — just riding whatever traction the wind can get on the ocean surface. Bliss!

I wanted to list a few other things that have gotten me close to surfing’s total out-of-office response. And none of them will work as well as going surfing alone, but these things, if done with intention, will, over time, bring back the thing that our phone extinguished from modern life: wonder.